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Part 2 – The archive
One of the suggestions made in discussions on remix to cope with the problem of authorship in the digital age, is to shift the focus from the author to the selector, the moderator or the curator. In cases where authorship is hard to establish or even absent, the archive can function as a similar tool to establish authority. These two solutions to the issues of authorship, authority and originality have been examined by Eduardo Navas, artist, curator, and remix theorist.
To deal with the constantly changing now, Navas turns to history as a source of authority, to give legitimacy to fluidity retrospectively by means of the archive. The ability to search the archive gives the remix both its reliability as well as its market value, Navas argues. By recording information, it becomes meta-information, information that is, as Navas states, static, it is available when needed and always in the same form. And this recorded state, this staticity of information retrospectively, is what makes theory and philosophical thinking possible, as Navas claims, “the archive, then, legitimates constant updates allegorically. The database becomes a delivery device of authority in potentia: when needed, call upon it to verify the reliability of accessed material; but until that time, all that is needed is to know that such archive exists.[1]
Navas is, however, also ambivalent about the archive as a search engine, where he argues that in many ways it is a truly egalitarian space—able to answer as he states ‘all questions’—but one that is easily commercialized too. What does it mean when Google harvests the data we collect and our databases are predominantly build up on social media sites? As Navas states, in this respect we are also witnessing an increasing rise of information flow control.
The problem with the archive as a legitimation device for that what it keeps, as a tool to provide the necessary critical distance as Navas argues, is that the archive an sich does not provide any legitimation but is build upon the authority and the commands that constitute the archive. This is what Derrida calls the politics of the archive. What is kept and preserved is connected to power structures, the power of those who decide what to collect (and on what grounds) and the power to interpret the archive and its content when called upon for legitimatory claims later on. The question of authority does not so much lie with the archive, but with who has access to the archive and with who gets to constitute it. At the same time, although it has no real legitimatory power of its own, the archive is used as an objectified extension of the power structures that control it. Furthermore, as Derrida also shows, archiving is an act of externalization, of trying to create stable abstracts.[2] A critique of the archive can be that instead of functioning as a legitimation device, its focus is foremost on objectification, commercialization and consummation, where knowledge streams are turned into knowledge objects, where we order knowledge into consumable bits. As Navas already states, the search engine, based upon the growing digital archive we are collectively building, is Google’s bread and butter. For instance, by initializing large projects like Google Book Search, Google on the one hand aims to make the world’s archive digitally available—digitize the “world’s knowledge” or at least, the part Google finds appropriate to digitize, mostly works in American and British libraries (and thus mostly English language works)—which in Google’s terms means making them freely searchable. And Google partners with many libraries worldwide to make this service available. However, most of the time only snippets of poorly digitized information are freely available and for the full-text functionality, or more contextualized information, books can be acquired via for instance Google’s Ebooks programme (formerly Google Editions). This makes all the more clear how within this environment, search is fully embedded within a commercial framework.
The interpretation of the archive is a fluctuating one, the stability it seems to offer a fraud. As Derrida describes, the digital offers new and different ways of archiving, and thus also a different vision on that what it constitutes and archives (both from a producer as well as from a consumer perspective).[3] Furthermore, the archiving possibilities also determine the structure of the content that will be archived as it is becoming. The archive thus produces just as much as it records the event. The archive produces information, it produces knowledge, and it decides how we determine what knowledge will be. And the way the archive is constructed is very much a consideration under institutional and practical constraints. What, for instance, made Library of Congress decide to preserve and archive all public Twitter Feeds starting from its inception in 2006? And why only Twitter and not other similar social media sites? The relationship of the archive to science is a mutual one, as they determine each other. A new paradigm also asks for and creates a new vision of the archive. This is why, as Derrida states, ‘the archive is never closed. It opens out of the future.’[4] The archive does not stabilize or guarantee any concept. Foucault acknowledges this ‘fluidity of the archive’ where he sees the archive as a general system of both the formation and transformation of statements. But the archive also structures knowledge and our way of perceiving the world, as we operate and see the world from within the archive. As Foucault states: ‘it is from within these rules that we speak, since it is that which gives to what we can say.’[5] The archive can thus be seen as governing us and this again goes directly against the idea of critical distance Navas wants to achieve with his idea of the archive, as we can never be ‘outside’ the archive. Let me reiterate that the above critique is not focused on doing away with the archive or on the creation of (Open Access) archives, which play an essential role in amongst others the making accessible of scholarly research, preserving it, adding metadata and making it harvestable. It is focused mainly on being aware of the structures at play behind the archive and on putting question marks at both the perceived stability of the archive, as well as at its authority and legitimacy.
Part 3: Remix re-examined
See here for part 1 and here for part 2
Navas’s and Manovich’s thinking on remix seem to complement each other nicely. Where Navas analyses remix as discourse from a historical context, taking into account power-relations and the wider societal context shaping and triggering the rise of remix, Manovich takes a deep leap into the future, trying to think a world in which remix and the free flow of information through meta-media have become ubiquitous. He explores what this will mean for the way we produce, consume and analyse culture. Navas shows how remix has been an active force for change in the past, Manovich wants to explore how remix can still be an active stance to shape culture in the future. Both of them introduce the problem of fluidity and time and what this means for our (print-based) object-oriented society based on repetition of well-defined objects created by specific authors. Navas looks at the archive as a means to capture and stabilize cultural fluidity whilst at the same time creating reliability. Manovich looks at the way we can work with modularized recombinable data-sets to structure and control information flows. Both of them struggle with the dilemma of object-like thinking within a fluid environment. For both of them remix is or has become the defining characteristic of our digital culture.
Open Books
The dilemma’s Navas and Manovich touch-upon in their writing on culture at large can be directly related to our thinking surrounding the book and/or the future of our knowledge and communication system within academia. As Deleuze and Guattari argue in A Thousand Plateaus, a book is an assemblage, a multiplicity, it only exists in its connections. The paradox lies in the fact that a book can at the same time be seen as an organism as well as a body without organs, with neither a subject nor an object, as pure becoming:
“A book is an assemblage of this kind, and as such is unattributable. It is a multiplicity—but we don’t know yet what the multiple entails when it is no longer attributed, that is, after it has been elevated to the status of a substantive.”1
This very well captures the dilemma between a more closed off and object-oriented thinking of the book and a more fluid, open thinking of the book as a network of relations, making contact on and through the outside. The metaphor of remix and the influence of remix culture and theory on the way we look at the book is thus an interesting one. What happens with the order of the book as we embrace this more open thinking of the book as becoming, without a stable core, no fixed author and a yet unknown system of authority? The question is whether it is still useful in the digital age to think of the book—and our knowledge system based upon it—as a stable object and whether it is possible (and necessary!) to look at the book more as an object of possibilities, a fluid moment of potentiality and becoming. And this is where remix theory comes in handy, trying to think exactly what it means when objects increasingly become bodies without organs and only exist in their connections to each other.
The importance of Navas analysis of remix for the book and the knowledge system we have created around it, lies in the way he tries to cope with the problems of stability and authorship. Navas discusses three partway solutions that are, as I feel, of direct interest for scholarly communication and its battle with these notions in the digital age. First of all he explores the archive as a way of both stabilizing flow and creating a form of authority out of flux and continual updating. Next to that he proposes the role of s/he who selects (or curates or moderates) as an alternative for the author. In a way one can argue that this model of agency is already quite akin to scholarly communication, where selection of resources and referring to other sources, next to collection building, is part of the research and writing process of most scholars. Finally Navas tries to explore an alternative means of critique based on a fluctuating identity and culture that tries to resist commercialization by staying on the liminal threshold; one based on seizing the production tools, and on seizing control over repetition by means of representation. And Manovich argues for a similar potential, the potential of culture (and in this respect knowledge) creators to modularise data and make it adaptable within multiple media and various platforms, mirroring scientific developments with standardized meta-data and the semantic web. These are all interesting steps beyond thinking ‘the book’ status-quo, challenging scientific thinking to embrace process, sharing, and letting go of idealized ideas of authorship that can stand in the way of true creativity. Navas does an interesting job in starting to deconstruct them, to show how they increasingly become problematic in todays remix culture brought about by the possibilities of digital media.
But in many ways Navas (as well as Manovich) runs up against what seem to be the borders of this more process-oriented thinking. His alternative options are equally still very much connected to stability: the archive is needed to objectify culture; selection is another form of agency and does not (fundamentally) do away with authorship; and an alternative form of critique is still a critique focused on agency and on a (stabilized) object, on a structure of control. The question of keeping an archive also becomes increasingly problematic when objects become dispersed amongst various platforms. How do we keep track of an object or of data once it goes viral? And what about the role of the selector when selections can be made redundant, choices can be altered and undone by mass-collaborative, multi-user remixes and mash-ups? In what way are the solutions Navas and Manovich offer only temporary solutions to cope with a world that is and always has been in flux and is now increasingly unstoppable in all its fluid manifestations? In what way might it be necessary to let go of this object-like thinking and to start theorizing a perception of culture, science and critique that lets go of these fixed frames of thought and immerses the real of eternal becoming? Wouldn’t it be more interesting to perceive culture as a fluidity from which we abstract objects for the sake of analysis and clarity, instead of seeing culture as being build up out of separate building blocks and recombinable data-modules? Isn’t it time to start thinking a knowledge and communication system based on continual updates and change, without a stable core, both as its object and subject? And is this even possible? In what way does the concept of the open book present us with a paradox in this respect?
Performative inflections
Remix Theory and many remix theorists (like for example Navas, Manovich, Lawrence Lessig, Paul Miller a.k.a DJ Spooky, Mark Amerika) have one more important aspect in common. Many of them experiment with different kinds of remix-practices themselves. In many ways their work poses a challenge to the often perceived dichotomy between theory and practice. Navas remixes his older writings, updates them and uses various media (amongst others film) to bring his message across. By using a blog as his main outlet he connects to other thinkers and consumers. On his blog he also acts as a curator or selector, bringing together other texts on remix. Furthermore he practices an interdisciplinary practice mixing his theoretical writing with his curatorial and art practices concerning remix. In Navas words:
“Remix Theory is designed to move towards a remix of itself, by recombining much of the material that is archived to put to test the possibilities of Remix. This will become transparent as the database grows, and specific projects are developed. The site is designed to host, archive and promote projects which explore the current possibilities of Remix online and offline; it is prepared to become a repository of collaborations with different people and institutions.”2
Manovich approach to his work in many ways mirrors software production. He brings out various versions of his work, unedited, and in many ways “unfinished”, waiting for feedback from the community after/from which they can subsequently be updated. His books can also clearly be seen as a remix of his various articles. Furthermore his scientific method can be seen as one in which media and methods from the hard sciences get mixed up and applied to ‘traditional’ humanities subjects within his cultural analytics framework.
Remixing knowledge
What is so interesting about remix for academic knowledge production, consumption and dissemination? I see remix as an exciting way to initiate a ‘thinking beyond the book’. Digital texts and books contain the potential to transform our knowledge system or the way we think and relate to knowledge. This ‘thinking beyond the book’ is not something that only became possible with the rise of the digital. It has always been part of the way we have envisaged and constructed our knowledge system. There are however some ‘knowledge practices’ we have adopted and grown accustomed to, such as authorship, stability and authority. Digital and online media offer the potential to increasingly critique these notions where thinking a knowledge system beyond these notions increasingly seems to become a practical reality. Remix is a liminal concept in this way; it stands on the border of these customary ways of thinking. It shakes them up. It poses a potential crisis.
Remix Theory can be seen as a new way to critically think the potentiality of the book, as a way to think beyond the book, as a strategy to explore its multiple potentialities, to challenge established notions like stability, identity and materiality that are all bound up with (printed) books and at the same time with our current conception and practice of knowledge.
Remix is a cultural and a political phenomenon, it can be seen as a resistance against essentialisms. It can be used as means to critique the essentialist doctrines at work within the Humanities. Remix Theory can be a framework to question issues of authorship, stability, authority and originality within these disciplines and within science at large, just as much as it has been a framework to question these in for example music, art and poetry. Finally, the way it mixes theory and practical methodology, and the way it mixes media can be seen as both a commentary on and an inspiration for the (digital) humanities. And although, as I have argued before, it does not fundamentally challenge or alter these concepts, it is a (necessary) step in the right direction, towards a more fluid conception of the humanities.
1 See: Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
Part 2 – Lev Manovich
Lev Manovich is a professor of Visual Arts, at the University of California, San Diego, specialized in new media, software and digital culture. Manovich directs the The Software Studies Initiative where he practices cultural analytics. Similar to Navas, he has theorized and applied the concept of remix frequently in his papers and books. However, although at some points overlapping, Manovich position on remix differs in specific ways from Navas’s where his focus seems to lie more on the functional possibilities of remix than on the dialectical power structures that have surrounded and triggered remix. In his article ‘remixability’ (2005) Manovich explores Dybwad’s concept of collaborative remixability, which is build upon the aspects of shareability and recombinable information and media. Manovich mostly focusses on the way both the production and the consumption (and analysis) of culture has changed with the coming of new media. Through the development of software, remix has become a common condition for our digital culture. Symptomatic to remix culture is the introduction of the time-aspect. As Manovich states there are no longer senders and receivers of information in the classical sense, they are only temporary ‘reception points’ in information’s path through remix. The concept of modularity is also important in Manovich’s writing on remix, where he sketches an utopian future in which culture would function as Lego-blocks:
“Will the separation between libraries of samples and “authentic” cultural works blur in the future? Will the future cultural forms be deliberately made from discrete samples designed to be copied and incorporated into other projects? It is interesting to imagine a cultural ecology where all kinds of cultural objects regardless of the medium or material are made from Lego-like building blocks. The blocks come with complete information necessary to easily copy and paste them in a new object – either by a human or machine. A block knows how to couple with other blocks – and it even can modify itself to enable such coupling. The block can also tell the designer and the user about its cultural history – the sequence of historical borrowings which led to the present form. And if original Lego (or a typical twentieth century housing project) contains only a few kinds of blocks that make all objects one can design with Lego rather similar in appearance, computers can keep track of unlimited number of different blocks. At least, they can already keep track of all the possible samples we can pick from all cultural objects available today.”1
With this quite instrumental vision of culture, Manovich seems to disregard the tension that is created in ‘remix as discourse’ which Navas so eagerly defends. Furthermore on the one hand Manovich claims to let go of the idea of culture as finalized objects (using the metaphor of information running like a stream of water down a mountain, branching out in an immense variety of interconnected streams) but at the same time he does stress the importance of modular blocks of data culture, thereby in a way holding on to the same essentialist notions he tries to deconstruct, only on another scale. He does not find a way out of this object-like thinking although he suggests to do so: ‘In this scenario, any well-defined part of any finished cultural object can automatically become a building block for new objects in the same medium’ This triggers the question: Is an object finished when it at the same time constitutes a building block for another object? Manovich plays with more of these paradoxes in his thinking, for instance where he makes a plea for standardisation of culture via modularity whilst at the same time leaving space for diversity: ‘ In other words, if pre-computer modularity leads to repetition and reduction, post-computer modularity can produce unlimited diversity.‘
Modular ecology
Many of Manovich ideas devised from his ‘look from the future’ as he calls it, can be seen as honourable convictions focussed on ‘helping bits move around more easily‘. This ecology in which remix and modularity are reality is a method for Manovich to devise a new way with which we can perform cultural analysis. Nonetheless, although standardisation as a strategy and a means to make culture more free and shareable is a goal worth pursuing, by not targeting the context surrounding cultural production and consumption, Manovich neglects the political and economic conditions that for a large part confine and determine the possibility of sharing. In this respect his approach seems a bit naïve. The problem of copyright for instance hardly gets touched upon in his writings on remix. He seems to ignore the fact that the Internet and digital media are no free playing grounds but are for a large part defined by proprietary cultural entities and interests.
Manovich sees a lot of potential for the Internet (as Navas does) where it, as he states, has put the production tools in the hands of the prosumers: ‘ Culture has always been about remixability – but now this remixability is available to all participants of Internet culture.’ But is it actually that easy? Is there more freedom to culture in the digital realm? Although we might now have more control with respect to the production tools, as Navas has made clear we are still immersed in platforms that control our data flows and feed off the data we produce. At what price does the possibility of remixability really come about and in what way and from which perspective should we look at it as a liberating force? Manovich does however not completely ignore problems of power-relations and copyright. In ‘What comes after remix‘ he remarks:
“Yet we are left with an interesting paradox: while in the realm of commercial music remixing is officially accepted, in other cultural areas it is seen as violating the copyright and therefore as stealing. So while filmmakers, visual artists, photographers, architects and Web designers routinely remix already existing works, this is not openly admitted, and no proper terms equivalent to remixing in music exist to describe these practices.”2
But although he does mention these issues he does not seem to draw the consequences of these circumstances for the possibility of his larger theory. Manovich does not fundamentally debate remix in a critical contextual manner, although he does define it in his book Software Takes Command as being ‘the cultural logic of global capitalism’. This lack of a critical approach mainly has to do with the fact that Manovich wants to look beyond the present situation and power structures to a possible utopian remix future. As he states, he is more interested in showing how software has enhanced the possibility of blending in culture more easy: “To use the terms of Roland Barthes, we can say that if modernist collage always involved a “clash” of elements, electronic and software collage also allows for “blend.”
Deep remixability
Manovich tries to explore how with the coming of software a shift in the nature of what constitutes a cultural “object” has taken place, where cultural content often no longer has finite boundaries: it is no longer received by the user but it is traversed and/or in constructed and managed. In this way for Manovich culture is a product that still gets constructed both by the maker as well as the consumer. However, the real revolution lies not in the possession of the production tools but in the possibility to exchange information between media, what he in Software Takes Command calls the concept of ‘deep remixability’. As Manovich argues in ‘Remix and Remixability’, culture is actively being modularised by users to make it more adaptive.
“ On the other hand, what seems to be happening is that the “users” themselves have been gradually “modularising” culture. In other words, modularity has been coming into modern culture from the outside, so to speak, rather than being built-in, as in industrial production.”3
And this is where Manovich gets more to the point. For him culture is not modular, it is (increasingly) made modular—however, he still does not address the tension here where standardization and modularization could also be seen as an attempt at commodification and commercialisation of culture, as much as it can be seen as an active act of prosumer resistance (as Navas has already shown: remix has a double face)—and what Manovich is interested in his in how this modularity is increasingly being extended to media themselves. Manovich introduces the term deep remixability to show how remix of various media has become possible (a common software-based environment) next to a remix of the methodology of these media:
“Software production environment allows designers to remix not only the content of different media, but also their fundamental techniques, working methods, and ways of representation and expression”4
The future Manovich sees for human culture with the increase of pre-fabricated modularity is a future of softwarization: media will become remediated in the ultimate remediation machine: the computer. According to Manovich this will lead to a new aesthetics and ultimately to a new species. This for him is the power of technology and remix culture, the power to actively change and shape culture. As Manovich states, we need smaller re-combinable parts for this:
“Remix culture demands not selfcontained aesthetic objects or self-contained records of reality but smaller units – parts that can be easily changed and combined with other parts in endless combinations”5
Where Manovich calls remix the basic logic of cultural production, culture is transformed from objects to data in his vision, the difference being mainly scale and modularity. In ‘Generation Flash‘, Manovich argues for a modernist viewpoint (though keeping the skepticism of post-modernism) by declaring a preference for as he calls it a ‘belief in science and rationality, emphasis on efficiency and basic forms, idealism and heroic spirit of modernism’. Manovich vision on remix is a vision of how he wants culture to become, to be shaped, to be prosumed and analysed. The question is however whether by focussing on data mining and visualizations and on thinking culture as data we are not running the risk of fixating on studying meaningless vessels. Although Manovich defends his approach as one of complementarity, of expansion, the question remains, do we want to understand culture or do we want to analyse utopia?
1 See: www.manovich.net/DOCS/Remixability_2.doc
2 See: http://remixtheory.net/?p=169
3 See: www.manovich.net/DOCS/Remix_modular.doc
4 See: softwarestudies.com/softbook/manovich_softbook_11_20_2008.doc
5 See: softwarestudies.com/softbook/manovich_softbook_11_20_2008.doc
Part 1 – Eduardo Navas
In the first part of New Visions for the Book, I described how the concept of the book is being used as a strategic power tool to argue for a certain knowledge system. I tried to show how within this discourse certain essentialist notions—such as authorship, stability, and authority—still hold a lot of prestige and are hard to discard. In the subsequent parts of New Visions for the Book I therefore want to take a few expeditions outside the world of the scholarly book to look at the way other disciplines and other media have struggled with or have come to terms with the above mentioned notions. I want to start with looking at the concept of remix, engaged with mostly in music and art theory but increasingly a concept applied to describe and analyse culture at large. Here I want to focus on two thinkers who have extensively theorized remix: Eduardo Navas and Lev Manovich. After taking an in depth look at Navas work on remix first, I will explore Manovich’s thoughts on the subject in the next post, contrasting it with Navas’s ideas. Finally, I will explore what the consequences of their thoughts and their analysis of remix are for the scholarly book, the knowledge order it stands for and the concepts it reifies.
Eduardo Navas is a researcher and an artist with an interdisciplinary practice, a crossover between art, culture and media. Remix can however be seen as the overarching theme of his work. Remix Theory is the name of his blog, where he posts his own essays and articles on remix, and where he also ‘host(s), archive(s) and promote(s) projects which explore the current possibilities of Remix online and offline’. I will reflect on some of his writings as published on Remix Theory, predominantly on Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture, Remix: The Bond of Repetition and Representation, and After the Blogger as Producer.
Allegorical strength
Navas analyses the concept of remix from a historical materialist perspective. According to Navas it is necessary to explore the history and development of remix to understand the dialects at play within remix. He describes how the concept of remix was derived from the model of musical remixes in the late 60s and 70s with roots in Jamaica. The musical remix then expanded through hiphop DJs via versions, turntablism, sampling and the practice of cut n’paste. According to Navas remix culture only came about with the coming of digital technologies: ‘Generally speaking, remix culture can be defined as the global activity consisting of the creative and efficient exchange of information made possible by digital technologies that is supported by the practice of cut/copy and paste.’ The concept of remix, which Navas defines as ‘the activity of taking samples from pre-existing materials to combine them into new forms according to personal taste’ has thus been extended to other areas of culture. New Media and the Internet are for example based on the concept of sampling (cut/copy & paste ).
Navas descibes how remix has as an allegorical function. This allegorical function enables it to be a critical reflection on history and society. Navas distinguishes four main types of remix, which more or less developed chronologically: the extended remixi, the selective remixii, the reflexive remixiii and the regenerative remixiv. Although not all in an equal manner, these four types of remix all rely on the allegorical function. They reference history; they rely for their authority on the sources they cite, even if they claim autonomy:
“Allegory is often deconstructed in more advanced remixes following this third form, and quickly moves to be a reflexive exercise that at times leads to a ‘remix’ in which the only thing that is recognizable from the original is the title. But, to be clear ‘no matter what’ the remix will always rely on the authority of the original song.When this activity is extended to culture at large, the remix is in the end a re-mix, that is a rearrangement of something already recognizable; it functions at a second level: a meta-level. This implies that the originality of the remix is non-existent, therefore it must acknowledge its source of validation self-reflexively. In brief, the remix when extended as a cultural practice is a second mix of something pre-existent; the material that is mixed at least for a second time must be recognized otherwise it could be misunderstood as something new, and it would become plagiarism. Without a history, the remix cannot be Remix.”1
For Navas remix is an active force which originated as a critical discourse from an outsider position. He describes remix in music in the shape of the DJ as a form of resistance. He draws upon Jacques Attali‘s concepts of repetition and representation and on Attali’s claim of how repetition (brought about by the possibility of mechanical reproduction) functioned as a force that took over representation in music and became the power tool of commercialism and the culture industry to enslave the artist. Repetition became ideology. Navas critiques Attali by showing how the DJ was able to turn repetition into an active force again. The DJ caused a rupture in the culture industry, Navas states, disrupting repetition and reintroducing representation with agency. Navas makes clear that the DJ was able to take back this critical position with the use of remix and by being able to reclaim the production tools (for instance Navas shows how this accessibility was pivotal in the development of Dub). The same development can be seen in the rise of blogging as a critical (remix) practice, and the potential of the blogger as a producer of information, independent from the vested publishing channels and institutions. Navas states: ‘Representation, then, is repeated in a perfect loop—the result is a constant remix of repetition by representation.’ However, Navas goes on to show how this form of resistance is soon again seized and incorporated by commercial parties. When this happens remixes are no longer critical but become part of consumer culture. This is where Navas claims, borrowing the term form Adorno, they become regressive.
“To be clear, then, what the DJ initially brought forward is the appropriation of repetition by representation; thereby making representation friendly to repetition. Thus, representation does not resist co-option by repetition; if anything, today it is optimized for assimilation, by being constantly reblogged (remixed). What does this signify for cultural production? How can we reflect on the contentions of such shift?”2
In this way, next to being a potential for critique, next to being reflexive, as Navas states, remix can also be regressive. It has a ‘double face’. For Navas however it is essential to keep the loop alive, to keep on taking and producing this critical position to battle the forces of repetition which give people ‘false comfort’. We need to confront this false-consciousness by taking in a critical position, to enable ‘a constant flux between representation and repetition’.
Fluid mashups
But this constant battle with the forces of repetition and commercialisation is not the only problem Navas is struggling with concerning remix as a critical discourse. Another problem has to do with (the development of) remix itself. Increasingly the allegorical (and thus critical) function of remix is marginalized. Navas makes this clear by his discussion of reflexive mashups, an example of what he calls the fourth kind of remix, the regenerative remix. In the regenerative remix, updates are made constantly, for example by the use of software that also creates a well-organised archive, as with the example given by Navas: Google News. Here allegory is no longer the main function, but functionalism and efficiency are. Regenerative remixes are (at least initially) proposed to serve as convenient and efficient forms to stay informed rather than to be entertained. This development too has its benefits:
“The principle of periodic change, of constant updates (i.e. Google news are regularly updated) found in the Regenerative Remix makes it the most recent and important form that enables Remix as discourse to move across all media, and to eventually become an aesthetic that can be referenced as a tendency. Nevertheless, even in this fourth form, allegory is at play—only it is pushed to the periphery.”3
As it is automated however, reflexive mashups increasingly seem to loose their critical power. Partially to this is the problem of the lack of ‘agency’ in reflexive mashups. Where for Navas authorship has been replaced by sampling—’Sampling allows for the death of the author’—and the critical position in remix is taking in by s/he who selects, this stance becomes increasingly problematic once remix is automated. How are we to regain this critical power in the real-time web and without the fixed position or identity of s/he who selects?
Navas touches upon an important point here where when allegory and authorship are pushed to the borders, critical reflection becomes a challenge:
“The concept of critical distance, which has been used by researchers and intellectuals to step back and analyze the world, is redefined by the Regenerative Remix. This shift is beyond anyone’s control, because the flow of information demands that individuals embed themselves within the actual space of critique, and use constant updating as a critical tool.”4
As Navas shows, the regenerative remix is focussed on creating efficiencies in the ever-present, in the constantly changing now. It however still needs its archive, or history, as a legitimation device. The ability to search the archive of the regenerative remix gives the regenerative remix both its reliability as well as its market value, Navas argues.
Thresholds and Liminality
Navas trows out a few extra life-lines to cope with this situation. First of all, in order to get more grip on these fluctuations, he looks at postcolonial identity politics, mostly at Homi Bhabha‘s concept of liminal space ‘where identity is constantly defined, where one is neither one nor the other, where one is both and neither; where a third space to gain autonomy can begin to take place’. He uses the marxism of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri to criticise Bhabha’s position, where they state his position leads to undecidability. Although Navas concludes these positions mostly seem to clash, he also sees them both as integral and complementary aspects of the project of Critical Theory, they are ‘mutually intertwined’. For Navas is interested in how agency in the end does occur from this liminal position and from a culture that is in a constant state of flux, on ‘a feedback loop from the periphery to the center’. For Navas, even from within the liminal space, their remains the option to take in a critical position, to break through the undecidability:
“With these contradictions on trying to take control of the tools of production, what one can find in Bhabha’s proposition of searching for agency within the threshold is that, even when one has been pushed to the margins, and is not there by choice, one can actually do something productive within this space. One can actually take control of the tools available if one figures out how to do that.”5
A second life-line looks not so much at the problem of hybrid and fluid agency but at how to deal with culture that is in a constant state of renewal and real-time updates. Drawing on the example of the regenerative remix mentioned above, Navas looks at the idea of the archive to give legitimacy to fluidity retrospectively. By recording information, it becomes meta-information, information that is, as Navas states, static, it is available when needed and always in the same form. And this recorded state, this staticity of information retrospectively, is what makes theory and philosophical thinking possible, Navas claims:
“The archive, then, legitimates constant updates allegorically. The database becomes a delivery device of authority in potentia: when needed, call upon it to verify the reliability of accessed material; but until that time, all that is needed is to know that such archive exists. But there is another face of the coin: the database, which is played down in the front pages, is actually extremely crucial for search engines. Here the archive becomes the field of knowledge to be accessed; it is the archeological ground to be explored by sophisticated researchers and lay-people alike. It is a truly egalitarian space, which provides answers to all queries possible.”6
But again, the archive is easily commercialized too. The data we collect is harvested by Google and our databases are predominantly build up on social media sites. This has lead to an increasing rise of information flow control:
“At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is evident that the Regenerative Remix is defining the next economic shift. Remix culture is experiencing a moment in which greater freedom of expression is mashed up against increasingly efficient forms of analysis and control.”7
As Navas however states, with the coming of the regenerative remix, remix moves beyond basic remix principles, and a rupture develops which enables new forms of cultural production. The potential of the regenerative remix is a strong one for Navas, where it ‘mirrors while it also redefines culture itself as a discourse of constant change.’ And for Navas this movement of culture is then a movement between the centre and the periphery, between repetition and agency. Music (or culture) is always in a constant state of change to create progression. However, to thrive and evolve, culture needs to dwell on the threshold.
1 See: http://remixtheory.net/?page_id=3
2 See: http://remixtheory.net/?p=361
3 See: http://remixtheory.net/?p=444
4 See: http://remixtheory.net/?p=444
5 See: http://remixtheory.net/?p=345
6 See: http://remixtheory.net/?p=444
7 See: http://remixtheory.net/?p=444
i A longer version of the original song containing long instrumental sections making it more mixable for the club DJ. (reference: remix defined)
ii Adding or subtracting material from the original song. (reference: reflexive and regressive)
iii Allegorizes and extends the aesthetic of sampling, where the remixed version challenges the aura of the original and claims autonomy even when it carries the name of the original; material is added or deleted, but the original tracks are largely left intact to be recognizable. (reference: reflexive and regressive)
iv A recombination of content and form that opens the space for Remix to become a specific discourse intimately linked with new media culture. The Regenerative Remix can only take place when constant change is implemented as an elemental part of communication, while also creating archives. (reference: reflexive and regressive)
I read Lawrence Lessig’s Remix a few months ago, a great book with a stimulating positive approach to the whole piracy and copyright problema, focusing on finding solutions which cater to the increasingly prevailing remixed and remediated forms of digital art and culture, in which the hybrid has become common ground. Lessig discusses new musical ‘innovators’ like Girl Talk, who creates elaborate and eclectic remixes of current pop sounds and anthems, creating a new musical discourse which reflects, winks, ironizes and mocks, while still standing firmly on its own. These kind of adaptations, versionings or reinterpretations have been part of music since its beginnings, coming to the forefront mostly in dub, hiphop, turntablism and the use of samples in electronic music. Just think about all the beats, breaks, loops and glitches that have made a career for themselves and their derivative offspring in musical history.
Electronic music, though now very much grounded in the digital realm, did not originate there, but it did find a save heaven or warm nest in the online environment. Remixing, sampling and turntablism can be seen as the starting point of all kinds of different genres in electronic music, they might even be seen as the most essential aspect of this music genre. This has lead to all kinds of ontologies and classifications into genres and subgenres which have been set up to help define te jungle (ha!) of all the diverse electronic creations.
A great sarcastic attempt to develop such a musical ontology for electronic music has been around on the web for years: Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music. A highly personalized ontology that is (with many self-created genres and similar definitions and descriptions), though in its hilarity also strangely precise and very informative. The master mind behind Ishkur is Kenneth John Taylor. In an interview with Taylor, conducted by Joe Farbrook from Histories of Internet Art (who sees Taylor’s work as a form of found art), Taylor explains himself and his guide. His main reason to publish his guide on the Internet was the fact that there are to many copyright infringing samples on it and Taylor did not want to create a commercial product to profit of others work. He also wanted to be able to add the samples next to the text, playing whilst you are reading. Taylor’s vision towards his guide is very interesting, defining it as an unfinished project:
“If you are really into New Media and internet art and all that jazz, here’s some food for thought: My Music Guide isn’t done. It will never be done. It’s what you call a “work in progress”. I continually update it, revise it, change it, add different samples, newer samples, new genres, new definitions and snarling little comments to it as time goes on. There is no definitive version of it at all. It is constantly being changed by me. I think that is something that the New Media world is adopting now. I first heard of it, actually, from George Lucas when he mentioned the original Star Wars Trilogy as being a “work in progress”. And when you think about it, that’s exactly what the internet and new media is. There is no central planner. There is no Great Design to this World Wide Web of ours. We really have no idea what we’re doing now, and we have no idea what this thing is going to look like ten years ago (when it will likely be run and controlled by technologies that don’t exist yet). We are making this thing up as we go along. Every webpage is “under construction”, a work in progress. There’s no such thing as NOT being under construction, after all. I think that appeals to art as well. Under the traditional view, an artist will finish a piece (be it a book or a painting or whatever), and then work on the next piece. But the new model is one of continuously revising and updating existing pieces to fit new paradigms, to broaden their message, to evoke more complex reactions and responses, to keep up-to-date and make relevant commentaries about social life, or to keep improving. Art as Maintenance, and Maintenance as Art. If that doesn’t crank your gears, I don’t know what does. It’s a fascinating concept, I think.”
In this way the new remix culture can be seen and defined as a never ending story, in which (digital) culture is becoming fluid, amendable and liquid. This can be seen in music foremost but also in movies and documentaries, as I wrote about before, and in books. Some examples of fluidity in this respect can be seen in the unbook movement for general trade market publishing and the liquid publication project for scientific publications. But most of all this remix culture can be seen in the production of knowledge itself: knowledge can even be defined as a remix of different types of information into a meaningful context. So in a more meta context our whole information society is based on (the possibility of) remix, as Lessig also remarks in Remix. In a way, as Eduardo Navas argues in his article Remix, the bond of repetition and representation, the remix connects a culture with its past, reflecting as it does on a previous narrative:
“The remix is always allegorical, meaning that the object of contemplation depends on recognition of a pre-existing cultural code.The audience is always expected to see within the object a trace of history.”
But to get back down from this generalization cloud, we need to define the difference between this inherent remixiality in culture at large and todays specific remix culture. In a great wiki on the web called extendboundariesofliteracy (of which also a formal article has been published) it is explained as follows:
“The principle of remix has always been integral to cultural development, an invisible process through which cultures grow and evolve. On top of this “organic process”, however, self-conscious practices of remix have become popular cultural pursuits of cultural activity. Digital technologies have vastly amplified – in terms of quality and quantity – remixing options. Today, remixing cultural resources comprises what Lessig (2004) refers to as the new “alphabet” – that is, as the new building blocks of creative writing.”
Returning to Ishkur and electronic music, his ontological cravings concerning music go even further as he created the Great Samples Database, which is a user generated list of records and their respective source samples. The whole idea of creating a music ontology (which was already apparent in online encyclopedias/databases like Allmusic and Discogs) was very much enriched with the development of streaming Internet radio. With the coming of Last.fm (which only streams 30 seconds samples on request and the ocassional full track) and the likes (Spotify seems to be the next best thing so I hear) such an encyclopedia plus sound has increasingly become reality. Based on user generated tagging and categorising and based on the principle of serendipity, the whole music scene can and is now being indexed, subindexed and interlinked, creating an immense database of potential ways to discover and interact with music (not withstanding the fact that Last.fm has great lacks and gaps in content covered and played).
But back to the question of sampling, remixing and copyright. When did sampling exactly become such an outlawed activity, making artists liable to clear the different samples they used in their music? Why exactly does this feel wrong to me an clearly many others? Eduardo Navas goes back to the basics of remix, tracing its origin to music and leaning heavily on Jacques Attali’s concepts of repetition and representation, representation meaning the live performance by the author, aura still intact, and repetition reflecting the possibility the mechanic offers to record the music, to expand its use in different contexts and mediums. Navas actually argues that it is the (remix) DJ that again, by means of his agency, introduces the concept of representation into music, stating that in his way the DJ is actually composing a new score, freeing the music once more from its convines of repetition. In this way the copyright claims concerning the old idea of copy/repetition are no longer valid, as the remix is no longer a form of copy and past, but a new cultural creation, which Navas even calls a form of cultural resistance (consumer becomes producer, liberating him/her from his/her passivity: consuming via interactivity), referring to Critical Theory:
“To be clear, then, what the DJ initially brought forward is the appropriation of repetition by representation; thereby making representation friendly to repetition. Thus, representation does not resist cooption by repetition; if anything, today it is optimized for assimilation, by being constantly reblogged (remixed).”
As Jonathan David Tankel argues in a 1990 article on sound engineers (The practice of recording music: remixing as recoding), the remixer can be seen as an independent artist:
“The remix engineer can be viewed as an artist distinct from the original musician(s), no longer a collaborator, as Kealy suggested, but an independent creative force.”
With the introduction of agency in the remixing and aggregation of certain parts or elements of music into a new whole, the parallel can be drawn to what I argued before about information turning into knowledge by means of an active stance of the creator, combining information nodes into a meaningful collection which then constitutes knowledge:
“It is in a way his or her interpretation, combination and contextualization of the information. This explains why people have moral rights or even claim copyright or intellectual ownership over their active creation of knowledge out of information.”
Navas agrees that this constant new interpretation of history is what gives the creator his agency and independent stance:
“Thus, reflection of history comes through constant interpretation (in this case, by way of representation remixing repetition). The added lines of “Le Catalogue” are a metaphor for this element of historicity. In the end, no matter what tools are used to mix or remix in culture, what is important is being able to develop a critical position: one that will allow for a constant flux between representation and repetition with the purpose to confront false-consciousness.”
As Tankel argues, remixing is recoding. And the remix never ends, it is everlasting, ever expanding and unstopable, an active force giving actual potentiality to the creator and freeing music/content/information from its constraints. The progressive possibilities to mash-up, refashion and reconfigure culture in such an inherently modern manner, makes music/content/information/art, as Tankel concludes while referring to Benjamin, into the building blocks of represented repetition itself:
“The remix recording creates a new artifact from the schemata of previously recorded music. It is prima facie evidence of Benjamin’s contention that to “an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.”
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